


And This War's Not Over

by MeredithBrody



Series: The Romulan War [1]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/M, Romulan War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:39:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeredithBrody/pseuds/MeredithBrody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon is told one of his closest friends has been killed in the war, leading to him thinking about the losses he has experienced since the war began and how he needs to focus on ending the war in memory of those he lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And This War's Not Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PinkAngel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkAngel/gifts).



> This entire thing came out with no reason. I literally put a song on repeat and let my fingers type. I'm not really sure where this came from. 
> 
> I recommend listening to the song "Shattered" by Trading Yesterday while you read this, seeing as it's the song I had on repeat. The title of this ficlet is also taken from it.

He walked through the hollow and empty corridors of his ship and tried not to focus on the news he'd received. There had been many messages of the same type that he'd gotten in the last few years. Too many. Far too many. He had tried every time not to focus on the faces, the names and ranks. He had known this was something that came with the territory.

Starfleet had been at war for too long. Three years, four months, two weeks, three days and 12 hours. Roughly. He knew it to the moment. He had surely already given too much to this damn war. He had enough names to grieve for without adding more.

The difference was that the war didn't care about his personal casualty list. The war didn't really care about the fact that on the first declared day of the war he had last spoken to the woman he cared most about. A month later she and her ship had been missing, presumed destroyed or captured. 83 Human lives lost in a single day. Friends included, but Erika's loss had been the first one that had broken him first.

From that moment on he had ambled through. Focusing only on his duty, trying to ignore the pain he felt whenever her name or ship were brought up, almost always as an example of the casualties of war, as if the other officers, the other ships, lost in the battles since meant less.

Today he could safely say it didn't mean less. After Erika went missing, and his mother's death only a few months later, all he'd had left had been his crew. They had become his family, he was the loving patriarch, who maybe tried a little too hard at times. They were what he had left, and his senior staff had been his closest friends. The loss of any of them had been devastating. Be it to the war or to choosing to sit it out.

After all these years, all this time, he had hoped that he would be done, there would be no more wars, nothing left to fight. He wouldn't need to say goodbye to another,  but somehow it never worked out that way. The Romulan's just kept coming back. Another battle never far away. Another vigil at the site of another massacre. That was what his life had become.

He should have been used to it by now. Less affected by these messages, this pain. Better able to move on, to pretend that he could go on without these people, the people who clearly signed up to Starfleet for the same reasons he did. They were never meant to be warriors. They were never meant to fight. It didn't work out that way for him, for any of them.

Now he faced his most painful loss since he'd lost Erika. His best friend, and his good right arm. The person he could depend on to tell him whenever he was letting something get too personal. When he was letting something in too deep. So many times that had been the difference between him leaving survivors and taking them away. He had grown so bitter in the last few years. He wanted to make the Romulans hurt the way he hurt. He would never admit that to anybody else, but it was the truth. They had taken something from him, probably more than he would have thought at the time. Now they took all he had left.

The makeshift morgue in the lower cargobay had just gained a new casket, and this one Jon couldn't just walk by, couldn't act as distant as he had been able too through the years. Because this one was the one that contained his conscience, what was left of his compassion and humanity. This was the one that held his best friend.

In the coming months, somehow, he would have to learn how to do what they did himself. How to remind himself that the pain he felt was his pain, and that he couldn't make anyone else feel it, no matter how much he tried. He would one day have the chance to repair from these losses. That's what they'd always told him. He had believed it from them, because that was all he could do. They had never been wrong before, but this time he felt they were going to be.

He was broken beyond any repair now. There was simply no way back for him. The sooner he admitted that to himself, the sooner he could work on ending this war, so that nobody else would have to suffer the way he suffered. He would spend the rest of his life trying to make sure that the sacrifices of those he'd lost weren't forgotten. But for now he had other things he needed to focus on, the war wasn't over, and without fighting it, he couldn't end it all. That was what he needed to do. Then he could mourn, and then he could remember.


End file.
